COUMARIN IN CIGARETTES:CONFEDERATE RETRIBUTION:Their War Against Smokers, Yankees and Blacks

A fact dating back to the Civil War surfaced during the Attorney Generals vs. Tobacco Companies litigation to recover taxpayers' money that taxpayers had paid to care for sick smokers due to cigarette-caused health care.

The information alluded to was surfaced during a deposition in the Mississippi case, Mike Moore, Attorney General ex rel State of Mississippi v American Tobacco Co, et al, No 94-1429. Jeffrey Wigand, Ph.D., a former Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company scientist, was a witness and testifying. During the course of his testimony, he admitted coumarin (rat poison) being added as an adulterant in tobacco (See Deposition Excerpt).

Tobacco company attorney Thomas Bezanson objected, not that the Wigand testimony was untrue, but that "on trade secret grounds," it should not be revealed!!! The testimony is reprinted in the book by Philip J. Hilts, Smoke Screen: The Truth Behind The Tobacco Industry Cover-Up (NY: Addison-Wesley Pub Co, 1996), pp 161-163. For background on the Hilts book, see Ken Gewertz, "Smoke Screen: Philip Hilts reveals abuses by tobacco companies," in Harvard University Gazette (3 Oct 1996).

This revelation was a sensation. Dr. Wigand was interviewed repeatedly, including on 60 Minutes by Mike Wallace. Everybody seemed to think this was new information. Evidently they were misled by the false claim of Bezanson that it was a "trade secret." But not this web writer. This writer was not misled: Reason: familiarity with the extensive historic previous exposés. Now you can know them too! Trade secret, hah!!

As a matter of chemistry background, preparation process data was being reported in that era, e.g., by Sir W. H. Perkin, 8 Berichte 1599 (1875).

Poisoning has a long record of being used against one's enemies. For example, in 1623, British negotiators of a treaty with Indians near the Potomac River, under Chief Chiskiack, offered a toast "symbolizing eternal friendship." The British poisoned the food. The Indians (chief, family, advisers, and two hundred in the retinue), then died immediately of poisoning!—J. Leitch Wright, Jr., The Only Land They Knew (New York: Free Press, 1981), p 78.
Poisoning by the Spanish conquistadores is reported to have killed tens of millions in the 1500's, via smallpox, "anthrax, brucellosis, leptospirosis, trichinosis, and tuberculosis."—Charles C. Mann, "1491," 289 Atlantic Monthly (#3) 41-53, at 46 (March 2002).
America at Columbus' time had 150,000,000 natives, says Dr. Hippolyte A. Depierris, Physiologie Sociale (Paris: Dentu, 1876), p 25.
Dr. Depierris adds that Indians, in response to the invasion of their land, began using tobacco as a war weapon against the invading Spaniards and colonists, including by the deceptive approach of claiming it was health panacea, while of course actually intending to kill the invaders, pp 96-99.

When did the formula change to add coumarin to cigarettes occur? Right after the Civil War, during the “Second Civil War,” making tobacco a war weapon.

For background on the "Second Civil War," by "unreconstructed Southerners," see, e.g.,

Stephen Budiansky, The Bloody Shirt: Terror after Appomattox (New York: Viking,
2008) (cites the South's "brutal war of terrorist violence.")
Note that
"Attitudes that provoked the Civil War and still cause much red state-blue state nastiness have never disappeared, whether the issue is race, religion, guns, states' rights, trade, central banks or immigration," a quote from the
review by Prof. GeoffreyWawro of the book
by SimonWinchester, OBE, The Men Who United the States (Harper Collins Pub, 15 October 2013).

Why was this formula change made? As part of the Confederate revenge policy against America for having won the Civil War. The formula change was made during the "Second Civil War," making tobacco a war weapon.

They knew that Northerners, Yankees, did not think of tobacco as coming from the enemy.

Intellectually, Yankees should know that tobacco farmers had been slavers, had slaves, and had fought America.

Intellectually, Yankees should have realized that Southerners were not pleased Yankees had won.

But after the War, unlike too many people in Europe, Northerners never gave their win another thought. The North did not realize that the losers were enraged, murderously genocidally enraged. The North barely know the term "unreconstructed Southerners," the code term for hating the North.

Now it becomes clear that Bezanson was aiding and abetting, accessory to, the Confederate revenge policy of continuing the Civil War by covert, unlawful, treacherous, cowardly, treasonous means. Confederate leader Robert E. Lee supposedly "surrendered" at Appomattox (in April 1865, the month that doomed so many in America) but had in reality determined to prolong the strife via guerrilla war using such as chemical warfare and changing laws so as to "legalize" revenge upon blacks and the hated Yankees. This revenge policy carries out the last code between Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee: "come retribution."

Bezanson (tantamount to a Confederate soldier out of uniform) was trying to conceal a long-published public domain fact, one repeatedly published in the medical and botanic literature for over a century!!

(The mere fact that data is published in medical journals does not mean that laymen are aware. Unawareness is how laymen can be killed by a known toxic substance. The knowledge is limited to professionals in the subject matter, a small group of scholars. Lay unawareness is aided and abetted by the mass censorship of tobacco news ).

When Abraham Lincoln won the Presidency in Nov 1860, and months BEFORE he could even take office (4 March 1861), the South had flown into a rage, and pursuant to its "rule or ruin" policy, sought to overthrow the U.S. government, and started this latest war of aggression.)

Notice what the Civil War 1861-1865 meant in terms of casualties:

"The men of the North and South had fought 10,455 major and minor engagements and had suffered more than a million casualties. Aside from the dead—360,222 from all causes on the Union side and an estimated 258,000 on the Confederate side—there were the countless thousands who bore the marks of the War.

"According to the official records, at least 280,000 Union veterans returned home with wounds of varying severity; the Confederate wounded came to somewhat more than half that number.

[Ed. Note: Total: 1,038,222+]

"But the records had nothing to say about the hidden casualties of the War: those who came home mentally crippled or so debilitated physically that their health would remain precarious for the rest of their days." Source: Richard W. Murphy, ed. The Civil War: The Nation Reunited: War's Aftermath (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1987), p 25.

The war was Living Hell, the title of a history of that War, written by Michael C. C. Adams.

Southerners had already shown ability to carry on evil for centuries, passing it on to descendants for generations, says George Mellen, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (Boston: Saxton & Pierce, 1841), p 29.
Note modern examples, such as by Jefferson Davis' successor, Trent Lott. Lott regularly remarks that things would be better had racists of the past had more success!
This is a Southern method of carrying on the legacy, of passing on an attitude of evil. This skill of passing on the message for generations, is a skill "unreconstructed Southerners" have mastered for centuries.
Of course, if their remarks come to Northern attention, they "apologize." And when years later, caught again, apologize again . . . but keep on passing on the legacy!! Very well calculated, be assured.
Note the example of Robert Bork and accessories.

Unreconstructed Southerners hated America for winning the War; "loathing of the North was widespread and unrelenting. A Savannah woman taught her children never to utter the word ‘Yankee' without adding the epithets ‘hateful' and ‘thieving.' A North Carolina innkeeper told a Northern journalist that the Yankees had killed his sons, burned his house and stolen his slaves, leaving him only with the privilege of venting his spleen: ‘I get up at half-past four in the morning, and sit up till twelve at night, to hate ‘em.'" Source: Richard W. Murphy, ed. The Civil War: The Nation Reunited: War's Aftermath (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1987), p 28.

Such unreconstructed Confederates continued passing on their hatred, generation after generation. "Much more mayhem developed before [one] chapter of the Second Civil War ran its course. Writing . . . in July of 1869, Lt. William Hoffman may have given the best analysis of the turmoil, an analysis that is still thought provoking for those who study the Reconstruction era today. Hoffman said that the Southern rebels' hatred for the white loyalists and for the freedmen was such that it could never be overcome. The freedmen's situation was deplorable, he said, as he echoed the sentiments of all those who had seen blacks robbed or beaten, raped or murdered. White Union civilians were similarly persecuted, with some of their number also being killed. Even worse, Lieutenant Hoffman surmised that the [Confederate] hatred would be passed from one generation to the next: 'The coming generation, children and children's children[,] are zealously reared to the one great tenet: implacable hatred to the [Union] government.' The subsequent history of the South suggests that young Hoffman knew of what he spoke," say Prof. James M. Smallwood, Barry A. Crouch, and Larry Peacock, Murder and Mayhem: The War of Reconstruction in Texas (College Station: Texas A&M Univ Press, 2003), p 116 (Review 1, 2,
3).

One planter lamented about the change, "I never did a day's work in my life, and don't know how to begin." Source: Richard W. Murphy, ed. The Civil War: The Nation Reunited: War's Aftermath (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1987), p 33. (Details)

The Ku Klux Klan was created with a goal to "kill or drive away leading Negroes and only let the humble and submissive remain." Theirs was a "moderate voice" in comparison to the fact that Southern OFFICIALS early decided upon genocide (100% extermination) as policy. The Memphis "chief of police told his men to ‘kill the last damned one of the nigger race, and burn up the cradle.'" Source: Richard W. Murphy, ed. The Civil War: The Nation Reunited: War's Aftermath (Alexandria, VA: Time- Life Books, 1987), p 34.

Admittedly, there were some Federal troops, but demobilization was the Union goal (only 50,000 remaining after 800,000 were "mustered out" before 1865 ended), understandably trying to return to normal life after the catastrophe caused by the South's genocidal activity. This southern terrorist goal of genocide continued, as one Southerner admitted, "If you take away the military from Tennessee, the buzzards can't eat up the naggers as fast as we'll kill ‘em." Source: Richard W. Murphy, ed. The Civil War: The Nation Reunited: War's Aftermath (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1987), pp 25 and 36. For murder examples, see, e.g., Smallwood, et al., Murder and Mayhem, supra.

Unreconstructed Southerners, tobacco farmers, murderers, rapists, terrorists, were enraged that we moral Yankees had "stolen their slaves." They had enjoyed raping women, now we moral Yankees stopped their fun. They were mad. The revenge process, killing Yankees and blacks, was soon evident. For example, see the book by Sidney Andrews, The South Since The War (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866), especially pp 1-11 and 21-28. Such southerners deemed murder a right!

"As postwar president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, [America's enemy who helped cause the above-cited 1,038,222+ casualties] Robert E. Lee [1807-1870] created the nation's first [college] departments in . . . two curricula fields . . . journalism and commerce," says WebbGarrison, Civil War Trivia and Fact Book (Nashville, Tenn., Rutledge Hill Press, 1992), Chapter 5, "First Events and Achievements," p 110. This sinister linkage, journalism and business, censoring, falsifying, and prostituting truth to the Old South tobacco/slavery agenda, continues to present. And casualties thereby aided and abetted continue en masse. The continuing censorship and falsification policy assures that the public does not know such facts about the continuing war as those presented herein.

"A crime storm of devastating [terrorist] fury swept over the South. Negro school houses and churches were burned. Ears were cropped and throats cut. Men and women were stabbed, maimed, outraged, shot and hanged. Others were hunted and killed by dogs. In North and South Carolina alone, within a period of eighteen months, General Canby reported 197 murders and 548 cases of aggravated assault. In Alabama corpses dangled for months from trees to poison the air and make the traveler sick with horror. . . .'there is not one man or woman in all the South who believes they [blacks] are free, but we consider them as stolen property—stolen by the bayonets of the damnable United states government.'"—Prof. Oscar Sherwin, Prophet of Liberty: The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips (New York: Bookman Associates, 1958), pp 529-530.

Union General Carl Schurz (assigned in the South) wrote a Report on his findings: "Wherever I go, the street, the shop, the house, the hotel, or the steamboat, I hear the people talk in such a way as to indicate that they are yet unable to conceive of the Negro as possessing any [human] rights at all. Men who are honorable in their dealings with their white neighbors will cheat a Negro without a single twinge of their honor. To kill a Negro they do not deem murder; to debauch a Negro woman, they do not think fornication; to take the property away from a Negro, they do not consider robbery."—Senate Executive Document No. 2, Report of Carl Schurz, Condition of the South, 39th Congress, 1st Session, p 81.

To prevent the election as President of General Ulysses S. Grant, unreconstructed Southerners used mass violence. “In the South, white supremacists launched a campaign of terror designed to prevent blacks and their supporters from voting. ‘I intend to kill [loyal Americans] Radicals,’ vowed the Ku Klux Klan’s General Nathan Bedford Forrest; subsequently, more than 200 political murders were reported in Arkansas alone.” Source: Richard W. Murphy, ed. The Civil War: The Nation Reunited: War’s Aftermath (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1987), p 76.

Such Southerners carefully arranged to pass the hatred on down the generations. Such Southerners already well-knew tobacco's powerful killing power, and the body count. For example, by 1836, yes, 1836, it was already well-established "that thousands and tens of thousands die of diseases of the lungs generally brought on by tobacco smoking. . . . How is it possible to be otherwise? Tobacco is a poison. A man will die of an infusion of tobacco as of a shot through the head." —Samuel Green, New England Almanack and Farmer's Friend (1836). More exposés had followed:

pursuant to medical data on personal deterioration.
Vengeance-seeking Confederates saw the pattern, and began targeting their still-hated foe, in a pattern continuing to present.
April 1865 events had included (a) the fall of Richmond, (b) the Southern plan for guerrilla warfare whichn would include chemical warfare, and (c) the South's action to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, via Lincoln's assassination and replacement with a Southerner, Andrew Johnson, who'd support the South in its violent revenge activities.

Tobacco effects include "disturbances . . . on the bronchial surface of the lung" and the fact that "no smoker can ever be said . . . to be well."—"Effects of Tobacco," The Confederate States Medical & Surgical Journal (November 1864).

After the War of the Rebellion, they decided the normal amount of killing was not enough. They began to enhance this killing power even more, with coumarin in tobacco. Oh, how they hate "damn Yankees"! Tobacco farmers are in essence the neo-Confederate Army, still killing Yankees! (with themselves sometimes martyrs to the cause).

The hatred continues. It includes even hatred of anyone exposing their genocidal activities. Unreconstructed Southerners, via lawyers such as Kenneth Starr, carry on the old KKK intimidation policy, now against anyone daring to have a role in exposing the rat poisoning of tobacco. Note the case of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp v Merrell Williams, Henry Waxman, et al, # 94-5171; 314 US App DC 85; 62 F3d 408 (15 Aug 1995), suing people for their whistleblower role in exposing the coumarin plot.

Such lawsuits carry on the KKK intimidation policy against any "leading" people so only the "humble and submissive remain" who dare not object to unreconstructed Southerners' genocidal machinations. (Analogy: Hitler's mass slaughter of educated Polish people during World War II, as he deemed educated people a threat, the same attitude of the KKK).

Neo-Confederate tobacco companies, to keep their coumarin adding a secret, naturally opposed and sued to end state authority to do tobacco inspection, but fortunately lost at the Supreme Court in the case of Turner v State of Maryland, 107 US 38; 2 S Ct 44; 27 L Ed 370 (Md, 1883) (a business practices case), when it upheld the constitutionality of the tobacco inspection law.

A tobacco company also sued to overturn a law banning tobacco that contained anything other than tobacco, in the case of Felsenheld / Merry World Tobacco v U S, 186 US 126; 22 S Ct 740; 46 L Ed 1085 (1902), but fortunately again lost.

Re adding coumarin to tobacco, the fact of this specific aspect of Confederate retribution and revenge (pursuant to the Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee revenge policy carrying out the last code between them: "come retribution") was actually reported (in medical circles, sadly not known to the public at large) as long ago as 1884, shortly after the "Second Civil War" war weapon formula change to add this deadly adulterant was made. (However, due to the mass media policy of pro-tobacco censorship, and even pro-tobacco writings, enabling and aiding and abetting the ongoing revenge-killing process, this fact is not generally known). This first warning I have found of this Confederate revenge action was made by Dr. Laurence Johnson in 1884.

"[Trilisa] odoratissima deserves much more attention from the fact that it is largely used as an adulterant of smoking tobacco . . . There is abundant evidence to show that the leaves of this plant enter largely into the manufacture of many grades of smoking tobacco, especially those employed in our domestic cigarettes. And the author is convinced, from personal experience and observation, that the deleterious effects produced by smoking tobacco thus adulterated are much greater than those produced by the consumption of pure tobacco in even great excess.

"The inhalation of a few whiffs of the smoke from a cigarette made of this adulterated material, provided the inhalations are made in quick succession, produces a train of cerebral sensations of an intoxicating character as much different from any effect of tobacco alone as could be imagined; and prolonged use of such cigarettes invariably produces great derangement of the digestive organs, very little resembling the dyspepsia induced by excessive use of tobacco, together with cardiac symptoms of a distressing character.

"And again, the habit of smoking coumarin in this form appears to be more inveterate, more exacting, than that of the use of tobacco alone, so that the unhappy victim--for this he should be called--is never comfortable except when indulging. Hence it happens that cigarette-smoking in this country, in its effects upon adolescents especially, is assuming the proportions of a great national evil, and is producing far more deleterious effects than in other countries where it is practised to a greater extent but with different material." Laurence Johnson, M.D., A Manual of the Medical Botany of North America (NY: William Wood & Co, 1884), pp 170-171.

Many in Tennessee had been pro-Confederate. Tennessee had been significantly impacted by the Civil War (1861-1865). Its people were aware of the Confederate retribution policy of Jefferson Davis, deemed by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, "the mastermind behind the plot [for] the Lincoln assassination." Source: Richard W. Murphy, ed. The Civil War: The Nation Reunited: War's Aftermath (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1987), p 17. Jefferson Davis was such a personally powerful and violent man that it had taken four men to hold him to manacle (handcuff) him in prison, p. 22.

A farmer in his pickup truck in Alabama was driving across a bridge when he noticed a man standing on the rail of the bridge ready to jump to his death in the river below. The man stopped his truck, ran up to the man and said, "Hey fellow, why are you doing this?"

The man replied, "Well, I have nothing to live for."

The Alabama man replied, "Well, think of your wife and children!"

The jumper replied, "I have no wife or children."

The Alabama man then said, "Well, then think of your mother and father!"

The man replied, "Mom and Dad passed on many years back."

The Alabama man then said, "Well, think of General Robert E. Lee!"

The would-be jumper replied, "Who?"

With that the Alabama man said, "Jump, you stupid Yankee, jump!"

To such hate filled unreconstructed Confederates, Lee is still in Clouds of Glory, a supposedly impartial book by Michael Korda.

Remember Andersonville, the concentration camp where demonized Confederates lusting to maintain slavery, had mass slaughtered Union prisoners of war by "starvation and brutality," atrocities "synonymous with hell." The camp commandant, Captain Henry Wirz, "was charged with conspiring to 'injure the health and destroy the lives of Union soldiers and with 'murder in violation of the laws and customs of war,'" "found guilty and sentenced to hang." Source: Richard W. Murphy, ed. The Civil War: The Nation Reunited: War's Aftermath (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1987), p 37.

Michigan quickly followed Tennessee's example with MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, a 1909 law that forbids "any person within the state" from action that "manufactures, sells or gives to anyone, any cigarette containing any ingredient deleterious to health or foreign to tobacco . . . ."

Many other states too began passing cigarette bans. Such bans would vitiate the Confederates' undercover treacherous war against America. So the Confederates, now known as the tobacco lobby, reacted. They went to work to defeat and repeal such laws. To do so, some sources state that bribery was used. The Confederates—mass bribers—arranged with legislators in the 1920's that laws against poisoning people (precedents later followed in Nazi Germany in the 1930's under Adolf Hitler), were repealed, or left unenforced.

The result when laws against poisoning people either do not exist, or are unenforced can be said succinctly: "Cigarette Makers Get Away With Murder," says Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H., The Detroit News, p 4B (14 March 1993), and in her book, A Smoking Gun—How the Tobacco Industry Gets Away With Murder (Philadelphia: George F. Stickley, People's Health Library, 1984).

Other writers after Dr. Johnson also cited the "injurious" effect of trilisa odoratissima (the plant is also called by the innocuous sounding name of "deer's tongue"!). For example, Prof. L. H. Pammel, Ph.D., in his book A Manual of Poisonous Plants (Cedar Rapids, Iowa: The Torch Press, 1911), cited it on page 138.

A German author, Simons, Die Cumarin (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Pub, 1916), p 69 alluded to coumarin being added as an adulterant into tobacco.

Coumarin was cited thus, it is "commonly described as a narcotic which produces cerebral intoxication, depresses the heart and in large doses paralyzes it," and referencing Dr. Johnson's 1884 material, by Thomas S. Blair, M.D., "Coumarin and Tobacco" [Ltr], 92 J Am Med Ass'n (Issue # 17) 1471 (27 April 1929). Unfortunately, the AMA was then in one of its Confederate-dominated pro-tobacco moods, so pooh-poohed Dr. Blair's concern.

"The term 'narcotic' is broadly defined to encompass any substance, including . . . hallucinogens, which directly induces sleep, allays sensibility, or blunts the senses, and which, when taken in large quantities, produces narcotism or insensibility." See 25 Am Jur 2d, Drugs, Narcotics, and Poisons § 2." Annot., 92 ALR3d 47 (1979)

Pro-tobacco disinformation is evident in one expose of the use of coumarin, by referring to the plant as "useful"!! (So were gas chambers at Auschwitz!! The question is, "useful" to whom, for what reason?!! Flavoring rat poison to make it appealing to the intended kill targets is also "useful," perhaps with rats, but with people, the better word (than "flavoring") is "murder." See Dr. Whelan's analysis, supra.)

"The base of the flavoring liquid with which most cigarette tobaccos are dipped or sprayed ("cased," in the factory vernacular) is coumarin, once obtained from the tonka bean . . . . The bean, soaked in rum for several months, long served manufacturers. It has now been largely replaced by synthetic coumarin."—Jerome E. Brooks, The Mighty Leaf (Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 1952), pp 298-299.

"Deer's tongue has been used commercially for many years—mainly in cigarettes, because its coumarin content gives the tobacco a sweet taste; and harvest of deer's tongue is expanding. Deer's tongue is one of a number of materials used to add flavor to tobacco. . . . The composition of one flavoring extract that includes deer's tongue was patented [No. 2,969,795] in 1961. . . . About two million pounds of cured plants are harvested annually. . . . Because deer's tongue is a perennial and the roots are not harvested, maintaining populations is not a problem. A decrease in plant populations has not been noted. An active man can harvest up to 300 pounds of green leaves a day."—Arnold Krochmal, Trilisa odoratissima, 23 Econ Bot 185-186 (1969).

"coumarin [is] a chemical that gives cigarette smoke a sweet aroma and a taste like that of fresh-cut hay. After tests in the 1950's showed that it can poison the liver and other organs, the FDA removed coumarin from its [approved] list of food and drug additives,"—Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H.,A Smoking Gun—How the Tobacco Industry Gets Away With Murder (Philadelphia: George F. Stickley, People's Health Library, 1984), p 203.

"Coumarin was a component of some commercial vanilla preparations until banned in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration in 1954 because of evidence of hepatotoxicity in animals. . . . For the safety of all consumers . . . an efficient and unambiguous assay for coumarin is required. The FDA restricted the use of coumarin in food products in 1940 and banned its use in food products in 1954, based on confirmed test results showing toxicity to various organs, especially the liver, in rats and dogs. . . . The Occupational Safety and Health Administration designated coumarin as a 'Category I' carcinogen based on a report of a positive finding in a mouse-skin study and a report of bile-duct carcinoma in rats . . . There is also a popular belief that coumarin is a blood thinner and hemorrhage-causing poison."—Robin J. Marles, César M. Compadre, and Norman R. Farnsworth, in their exposé of coumarin smuggling from Mexico into the U.S. and explanation on how inspectors could detect it, "Coumarin in Vanilla Extracts: Its Detection and Significance," 41 Econ Bot (#1) 41-47 (1986).

For explanation of the deleteriousness of various chemicals (including those constituting cigarette ingredients), see

“When baits containing 0.025% warfarin are eaten for from three to five days, fatal internal hemorrhage results in from seven to ten days.” Like carbon monoxide, “Its anticoagulant action is not detectable by the rodent.”

Lest you think that coumarin is a danger only to small creatures such as rats, be advised that its “potent anticoagulant properties” are sufficient to adversely impact creatues far larger even than people, i.e., cattle, via “hemorrhagic sweet clover disease,” as noted in “Coumarin,” Encyclopædia Britannica, vol 6, pp 631-632 (1963), by Karl Paul Link, Professor of Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Due to cigarettes' deleteriousness,

“Over 37 million people (one of every six Americans alive today) will die from cigarette smoking years before they otherwise would,” says the U.S. Dept of Health, Education and Welfare's National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) book, Research on Smoking Behavior, Research Monograph 17, Publication ADM 78-581, p v (Dec 1977).

This number constitutes a “holocaust” (referring to the then “annual death death toll of some 27,500”), see Royal College of Physicians, Smoking and Health Now (London: Pitman Medical and Scientific Publishing Co, 1971), p 9. Such deaths are “natural and probable consequences,” a term defined in Black's Law Dictionary, 6th ed (St. Paul: West Pub Co, 1990), p 1026, as events happening “so frequently as to be expected [intended] to happen again.”

Cigarette deaths are not "accidents" ("unexpected" "unusual," "fortuitous" events), p 15. No other manufacturer-combination has 37,000,000 accidents, or even 27,500!

Examples of Tobacco Company Lawsuits or Otherwise Objecting to Revealing Information

And see Robinson v American Broadcasting Companies, 441 F2d 1396, 1399 (CA 6, 30 April 1971), a tobacco farmer censorship case. Tobacco growers sought to ban information on tobacco smoking hazards. In ruling "no," the Sixth Circuit said that "although it was constitutional to require that anti-smoking commercials be broadcast, it does not follow that an injunction prohibiting the broadcast of the same commercials would likewise be constitutionally permissible." This decision affirmed the lower court decision, 328 F Supp 421, 422, 424-426 (D ED Ky, 1 June 1970). That U.S. District Court had rejected tobacco growers' demand for restrictions on freedom of speech against smoking. The case involved

"growers of burley tobacco [who] complain [of words] which announce, directly, or by innuendo, that the smoking of cigarettes will kill those persons who smoke them . . . . cigarette advertising . . . has been directed to young persons . . . medical or scientific body undertaking a systematic review of the evidence has reached conclusions opposed to those of the Surgeon General's. . . ."

"The doctrine of clean hands requires this Court . . . to avert further injury to the public, by the continued retardation and erosion of public awareness of the hazards of smoking . . . the mere fact that information is available, or even that it is actually heard or read, does not mean that it is effectively understood. A man who hears a hundred 'yeses' for each 'no,' when the actual odds lie heavily the other way, cannot be realistically deemed adequately informed."

"Any time the uncleanness of . . . hands . . . comes to the attention of the Court . . . the Court is required to act sua sponte . . . on account of the public interest . . . for the advancement of right and natural justice."

Although it didn't succeed that day, tobacco lobby censorship normally succeeds as our tobacco taboo website shows. And there is a result: "Most smokers do not view themselves at increased risk of heart disease or cancer," say John P. Ayanian, M.D., M.P.P., Paul J. Cleary, Ph.D., "Perceived Risks of Heart Disease and Cancer Among Cigarette Smokers," 281 J Am Med Ass'n (#11) 1019-1021 (17 March 1999). In fact, "smokers never, even today, have sufficient information to make a decision about smoking," a quote from the 11 Jan 1999 testimony of Dr. Whelan.

Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H., is an expert who reports that, "Cigarette Makers Get Away With Murder," The Detroit News, p 4B [14 March 1993].) She has also written a number of books, including Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesn't Tell You: The First Comprehensive Guide to the Health Consequences of Smoking (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1997) and A Smoking Gun—How the Tobacco Industry Gets Away With Murder (Philadelphia: George F. Stickley, People's Health Library, 1984). But in court in January 1999, the judge refused to allow her to even mention the name of her book! Now that's censorship!

Truly the wise abolitionist Rep. Thaddeus Stevens was correct in his analysis of the unreconstructed South: "The foundations of their institutions, both politicial, municipal, and social, must be broken up and relaid, or all our blood and treasure have been spent in vain."—Sherwin, Prophet of Liberty, supra, p 533.

Ed. Note: When rebels in Scotland sought to overthrow and replace British monarchy dynasty in 1745, the English under King George II (1727-1760) followed this principle immediately after the last battle, at Culloden, in
1746: "the commander [Gen. Cumberland] of the government forces . . . ordered his soldiers to spare no one, not even the wounded lying in the fields and woods. . . . Hundreds of the fallen [wounded] were shot or stabbed where they lay. Some were even buried alive. Many of the captured were shot on the spot. . . .

"After the butchering of the [defeated] army . . . the [violence] continued. [The government commander] decided that a repeat of this rebellion must never occur. He was going to 'pacify' [them] once and for all. . . . the government army scattered thoughout the [rebellion area] bringing destruction in their wake. Cattle and sheep were slaughtered, crops ravaged. Cottages, farms, and houses were burned in every district . . .

"The lands of the fallen [rebel leaders] were forfeited and turned over to [government managers]. Laws were quickly passed that stripped the [defeated leaders] of all authority. [Their] councils were declared illegal, as was the wearing of [their clothing style], the playing of [their music style], even the mere speaking of [their language].

"The 'harrying of the glens,' as the pacification came to be known, was thorough, cruel, and brutal. [General] Cumberland was singularly successful in ensuring that the [potential rebels] would never rise again. . . .

"The [former] culture became just a memory . . . . But what was lost . . . did not outweigh what was gained—the elimination of the fear and wariness caused by the [rebels] and their violent and martial culture, their arbitrary and antiquated laws, and the genuine risk of real conflict. . . .

"So, although they [the surviving people] did not approve of the way the [rebels] were quelled by the English government and army, they were pleased with the result—the end of the specter of violence. An energy and determination fell over the [surviving Scottish people] that laid the groundwork for an extraordinary intellectual flourishing a generation later.” Reference Jack Repcheck, M.A., The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of the Earth's Antiquity (Perseus Pub, 2003), pp 81-83.

Following the battle, the composer George Frederick Handel (1685-1759) wrote the oratorio JudasMaccabaeus to honor the Duke of Cumberland, with the aria “See how the conquering hero comes”. See also "Hail the Conquering Hero" and "Thine Be the Glory" (music).
The effective British approach was in marked contrast to the U.S. approach under Presidents Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, etc., in dealing with the South. Like Chamberlain wanting peace at any price so appeasing Hitler, Lincoln merely issued an "Emancipation Proclamation" and "pardons," and intended to let the rebels back into the U.S. government. This promptly happened. The rebel leaders still holding their rebel notions, were quickly re-voted into state governments and Congress. They immediately enabled widespread lynchings of blacks and Reconstruction workers. This type naive and weak U.S. Reconstruction policy of appeasement left the rebels in full and bloody control.
This appeasement policy repeated the error of Julius Caesar. "Caesar had not proscribed his enemies, instead pardoning almost all." Result: He too was killed by those he had sought to appease, and more violence followed in the Roman nation. See also Michael Parenti, Ph.D., The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome (New York: The New Press, 2003).
Lincoln's naive appeasement/weakness policy repeating Caesar's error, enabled lynchings, segregation, atrocities en masse, and killings and poisoning as herein described. Tobacco planters had been in charge before their bloody rebellion 1861-1865, and instead of being wiped out as the English had done with their rebels, Southern rebel leadership was left not only alive, but also in charge, including holding office in both the states' and federal governments. Instead of making progress like Scotland, the South remained antiquated in attitude, and not only that but genocidal in terms of desire to kill. We still have the grey vs the blue, now called the 'red states' vs the 'blue states.'
Worse, Hollywood puts down the North, romanticizes the South. See Luther Spoehr: Book Review, Review of Gary W. Gallagher's Causes Won, Lost, & Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know About the Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2008).

Many southern tobacco farmers grow separately, for themselves.—Rev. John B. Wight, supra, p 34. See also "Rat poison added to tobacco for 'flavor'" (18 August 1999), saying, e.g., that "tobacco companies, by their own published admission in their trade publications, introduce a deadly pesticide-rodenticide called Warfarin or coumarin into the tobacco as a "flavoring." They call it a "flavoring" in order to cover up its true identity -- that is Rat Poison!"

"Dr. Benton E. Clover [told] the Anti-Cigarette League at their annual meeting on November 8, 1947, how "there came to [his health clinic] one time a patient, a man named Duke. The Duke family are the stockholders of the tobacco company. Duke said it was not tobacco that caused his trouble. Duke was surprised to learn anybody would think he would use tobacco. He said he made Duke's Mixture, knew what was in it, and wouldn't use it."—Prof. Pryns Hopkins, Ph.D., Gone Up in Smoke: An Analysis of Tobaccoism (Culver City, CA: The Highland Press, 1948), pp 220-221.

According to the Rhode Island State Attorney General Web Site, "A $15,000 fine was paid to the Department of Attorney General by United States Tobacco Company (UST). The fine is part of the settlement with the AG for making misleading claims about the lack of scientific facts to establish smokeless tobacco to be a cause of oral cancer. The comments, a violation of the Consent Decree and Final Judgement between the State of Rhode Island and the Tobacco Companies, were made by a UST spokesperson to the Providence Journal in an article published April 7, 1999."

We need full enforcement of the law. You are requested to help by sending a letter requesting enforcement of the state law, MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216, to Michigan Governor Jenmnifer Granholm and Attorney General Michael Cox. Each day 3,000 more people are hooked, so your doing so is urgent.

For those with interests in specific areas, pertinent data and sample letters tailored to that interest can be obtained by clicking on the item:

Please also write to your Senators, Congressmen, and the President, asking for a Michigan-type safe cigarettes law to be passed nationwide. Ask them to change the bill for fire-safe cigarettes, H.R. 1130, to say that cigarettes must be not only fire-safe, but safe, period. Here are addresses:

A movie, "The Insider" (1999) covers the subject of Dr. Jeffrey Wigand's exposé. There Wigand says coumarin is a "lung-specific carcinogen." Thanks to the litigation, a formerly secret document, "Project Coumarin - Top Secret," now discovered, reveals Philip Morris's concern that public health officials might learn of coumarin as an additive in cigarettes. It advises how to obstruct public health investigations. A copy is at the Philip Morris Document Site, reference "Bates Number" 2501046314/6317, and URL, http://www.pmdocs.com/getallimg.asp?DOCID=2501046314/6317. Be assured that the tobacco company did not like Wigand exposing the material. It sued him in Kentucky courts, as noted in the case of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp v Wigand, 913 F Supp 530 (WD Ky, 1996). (This was in addition to the anti-whistleblower case by Kenneth Starr cited above).

An early expose of cigarette adulteration occurred accidentally in the case of Latimer v U S, 223 US 501; 32 S Ct 242; 56 L Ed 526 (PR, 19 Feb 1912). That case was a tax case. The lower court decisions were evidently not published (while not a secret, the average laymen never sees such obscure documents). But at the Supreme Court level, all of whose decisions are automatically published, a surprising truth came out: the issue involved tobacco sweepings from off-the-floor being used in cigarettes!